The Genre Bucket

It was bound to happen at some point. Me, a horror critic accidentally buying two books with the same title. What I can't view as an accident is how terrible both of these books are. Enter The Nightwalker by Diane Guest and Thomas Tessier respectively. One invokes the name of V.C. Andrews on the cover but actually is only as disturbing as spoiled mayonnaise. The other sports praise quotes from Peter Straub and Stephen King and after reading it I doubt they actually read this garbage. Both of these suck in unique ways so I'm going to cover The Nightwalker by Diane Guest first. I feel like I should also mention that this was published only in the UK and after reading it I understand why. HarperCollins 1994 Paperback Edition The event that sets in motion the idea a ghost walks its ancestral estate is literally a collection of fine china being destroyed. So spooky. Honestly, this entire novel can be summarized as a bucket of haunted ancestral estate cliches with a topping of m...

Unlike the worst list my best of was really hard to narrow down. I only completed 35 books but as I discussed in my previous post in general, I enjoyed most of what I read. To compromise with myself there is an honorable mentions section this time featuring books that didn't quite make the cut. With that out of the way these are my Top 5 Best Reads of 2019! 5) The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson Written by the same author as future genre classic The Troop, this slim but emotionally rich meditation on memory and loss made me cry like a baby. On the surface about a man's memories of his summer adventures with a quirky uncle it unfolds into so much more successfully combining the myths of childhood with the real spectres of growing up and untimely death. This would rank higher but I was expecting this to be actually horror instead of a coming of age story but it still deserves to be on this list. 4) Monster by Christopher Pike This YA Horror was insane in t...

Hello Humans of the Internet! As you know it is now 2020 and like many readers I tracked the books I completed last year and decided to do a Top 5 Worst and Top 5 Best list. Why did I choose Top 5? I personally, think I didn't read enough to warrant a longer list. I only completed 35 reads in 2019 and in general my reading experience was fairly positive. A quick note though. I don't hold onto books I don't love 100% because of this I will not have the usual book edition info I provide since I don't have the books on me. All photos on this blog are taken by me of books I have purchased but I always ty to thoroughly document editions etc. so you can search for them yourself. On the Best list I will omit edition info simply for space. So without further ado here's my Top 5 Worst Reads of 2019! 5) Nightmare Hall #1 (The Silent Scream) by Diane Hoh This book is on here because it breaks my most important mandate: A book can't be boring. It's trying hard to ...

Almost everyone knows The Amityville Horror. Whether from the countless spoofs done by the likes of The Simpsons  or the highly successful 1979 film, that it almost feels ad nauseum to discuss the plot of this work that has become such a pop culture behemoth. What I will discuss instead is how mind-numbingly boring the source novel is. Like most people I watched the 1979 film and aside from the eye candy of James Brolin and Margot Kidder the movie itself is a decent little late 70's horror treat. It's not especially scary by today's standards but it has a few solid set pieces and is genuinely creepy in parts. That creepiness is enhanced by the fact that this is a likable family, you feel bad they are experiencing this when all they want is their part of the American dream. Then there's the book. Written by Jay Anson it's his first of only two novels he wrote in his lifetime and you can tell. The writing itself is simplistic, almost written for young adults and the b...

Somedays it's all a little too much. You're tired, maybe you had a pissy day at work, all you know is you want to be comforted. Many people turn to the aptly named comfort food to start feeling better. Everyone has one, that one dish that while nothing fancy immediately brings you back to your childhood. Maybe it's the special casserole your mom always made, roast chicken pieces, or a good ketchup slathered meatloaf. John Saul's Cry for the Strangers very much reminds me of that meatloaf. Dell's 1986 edition of Saul's 1979 novel John Saul is one of many authors who got chunked into the same bucket as Stephen King although at one point during the horror boom everyone was either the next Stephen King or had a blurb from King praising their work. But unlike his contemporary Dean Koontz, who desperately wanted to be Stephen King, John Saul was perfectly content in his own corner. Part of this contentment had to have come from the fact he had a formula and an in...

This may have been my fault but I went into reading The Sentinel by Jeffrey Konvitz with high hopes. After all it came on the scene pretty close after the big three of the start of the horror boom ( Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Other ) and even had a well received movie adaptation. But hot damn this book was hard to get through. Following the partial formula of Rosemary's Baby that you should never trust a realtor in New York when it comes to apartments, we follow the ordeal of beautiful model Allison Parker who after returning to the city following her father's death finds the perfect Brownstone to start over in only to be beset by sinister forces. The 1976 Ballantine Books Paperback Honestly? I hated the main character and felt fed up with her behavior by the middle of the book. She's a neurotic mess with a domineering jerk of a boyfriend I will get to later in this review. Don't get me wrong I understand she's supposed to be tortured, she is por...